In commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/916,232 (“the '232 application”), now U.S. Patent Publication No. 2002/0015110, herein incorporated by reference entitled “ARRANGEMENT OF COLOR PIXELS FOR FULL COLOR IMAGING DEVICES WITH SIMPLIFIED ADDRESSING” filed on Jul. 25, 2001 as well as in commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/278,353 (“the '353 application”), now U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0128225, herein incorporated by reference entitled “IMPROVEMENTS TO COLOR FLAT PANEL DISPLAY SUB-PIXEL ARRANGEMENTS AND LAYOUTS FOR SUB-PIXEL RENDERING WITH INCREASED MODULATION TRANSFER FUNCTION RESPONSE”filed on Oct. 22, 2002, and in commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/278,352 (“the '352 application”), now U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0128179, herein incorporated by reference entitled “IMPROVEMENTS TO COLOR FLAT PANEL DISPLAY SUB-PIXEL ARRANGEMENTS AND LAYOUTS FOR SUB-PIXEL RENDERING WITH SPLIT BLUE SUBPIXELS” filed on Oct. 22, 2002, novel subpixel arrangements are therein disclosed for improving the cost/performance curves for image display devices.
These subpixel arrangements achieve better cost/performance curves than traditional RGB striping systems—particularly when coupled with subpixel rendering means and methods further disclosed in those applications and in commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/051,612 (“the '612 application”), now U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0034992, herein incorporated by reference entitled “CONVERSION OF RGB PIXEL FORMAT DATA TO PENTILE MATRIX SUB-PIXEL DATA FORMAT” filed on Jan. 16, 2002; and in commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/150,355 (“the '355 application”), now U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0103058, herein incorporated by reference entitled “METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR SUB-PIXEL RENDERING WITH GAMMA ADJUSTMENT” filed on May 17, 2002; and in commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/215,843 (“the '843 application”), now U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0085906, herein incorporated by reference entitled “METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR SUB-PIXEL RENDERING WITH ADAPTIVE FILTERING” filed on Aug. 8, 2002.
These novel subpixel arrangements and systems and methods of performing subpixel rendering thereon cuts across nearly every technology base for creating a display. In particular, liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are particularly well suited to these novel arrangements and methods—as the above mentioned technology sharply improves display performance by increasing or holding the same resolution and MTF with a reducing the number of pixel elements when compared with RGB stripe systems. Thus, manufacturing yields for high resolution LCD displays should improve utilizing this novel technology.
It is known in the art of LCD display manufacturing to migrate row and column drivers—traditionally found on an IC driver circuit external to the active matrix display—onto the display itself. In polysilicon (e.g. low temperature poly silicon (LTPS)) active matrix displays, amorphous silicon active matrix displays or generally active matrix displays made with CdSe or other semiconductor materials, additional thin film transistors (TFTs) are created onto the display itself that serve as driving circuitry for the display—thereby lowering the cost of the combined driver/display system. FIG. 1A depicts a current conventional display system 100 that comprises a display panel 102 having row (104) and column (106) drivers comprising TFTs manufactured onto the panel. Separately, an integrated circuit (108a)—typically an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or field programmable gate array (FPGA)—accepts data input and may provide both timing or clocking of the data and outputing of the data and timing or clock signals to the panel.
As for driver circuitry, it would be advantegeous to leverage the cost savings of utilizing some processing capability of the TFTs on the panel to provide subpixel rendering processing (SPR) directly on the panel.